Our regular reviewer,
"Drooling" D.K., will take a break this
week
while the Supreme Plasmate takes a whack at it. His Orcishness
kindly allowed me to review this TPB when I told him just how much I
had enjoyed it. Also because I kept it so long, he hasn't had a
chance to read it...Marvel's "Essential" line of trade paperbacks
economically reprint some of their more successful comic book series of
yesteryear, but on cheaper paper and in black and white to save costs
-- savings which are presumably passed on to the consumer. Essential The Tomb of Dracula vol. 1
contains the entire original run of issues #1 to #25 of The Tomb of Dracula as well as Werewolf by Night #15 and Giant-Sized Chillers #1, to
complete the tag ends of cross-over storylines. The result, as
with all the Essential TPBs, is a truly mammoth collection, and one
which we might expect would be a bit excessive for anyone but a real
hard core The Tomb of Dracula
fan. But, while I read a few of the original comics back in the
'70s, and had fond memories, especially of Gene Colan's art, reading
through this titanic tome I was amazed that, not only did I not find it
heavy sledding...I could hardly put it down.

I haven't enjoyed a comic book this much since I read Al Williamson's
run of Star Wars!

First a bit of history. As you probably know, in the 1950s a wave
of public hysteria broke out in the U.S. over the question of whether
or not comic books were corrupting the nation's youths -- hysteria
which culminated in the creation of a self-regulating body known as the
Comics Code Authority. Henceforth, all comics -- if they wanted
stores to carry them -- were required to seek Comics Code approval,
which had strict guidelines of dos and don'ts, amongst the latter being
just about anything connected with monsters or horror. As a
result, throughout the 1960s, horror of any sort was verbotem, and superheroes came to
the fore. But then, in the early 70s, Stan Lee shook things up by
publishing his famous "drug issue" of Spider-man
without Comics Code approval. When that Spider-man sold anyway, the
powers-that-be decided it was high time they reevaluated the Comics
Code -- monsters included -- and loosened things up a bit. What
followed was a wave of
horror based comics which, though tame by today's standards, were
pushing the envelope of the day. Titles like Ghost Rider, Man-Thing, Swamp Thing, Werewolf by Night and Dracula Lives shambled out of the
shadows and into the light. And of them all, one of the greatest
(or at least most ambitious) was The
Tomb of Dracula.

Though those titles promised horror, they hadn't forgotten their roots
in superhero comics. The result, as I found reading this TPB, was
a surprisingly aggressive vision of the vampire count, a Dracula who
engages in two-fisted throw-downs with a regularity and verve which the
more courtly Bela Lugosi (or even Frank Langella) would never have
countenanced.

The series begins with Frank Drake and a friend visiting Castle Dracula
in Transylvania, which Drake, a descendant of the famous Count, has
inherited and now hopes to turn into a tourist attraction.
Drake's friend accidentally awakens the sleeping Lord of Vampires and
the rest of the series concerns the efforts of Drake and a group of
vampire hunters led by Quincy Harker, a descendant of Jonathon Harker
in the original novel Dracula,
to hunt Fangs down. They are
eventually joined by a more street-wise vampire slayer named Blade,
(who, all these years later, still thrives in the comics, albeit in a
slightly altered form, and who has appeared in no less than two hit
motion pictures). Unlike Bram Stoker's novel, here there is less talk
and more action, including use of imaginative weaponry like Harker's
wheelchair which shoots special vampire-killing darts. And yet,
for all the emphasis on comic book thud and blunder, what drew me in
and held me riveted was Marv Wolfman's dramatic prose style
married with Gene Colan's shadow-heavy, almost photo-realistic
pencils.

As has been pointed out by others before me, the coincidence of a man
named Wolfman writing a comic about Dracula (or, for that matter, a
letterer named Vladimir) is
just too perfect for words. But, apart from that, in The Tomb of Dracula Wolfman makes
full use of the serial nature of comics, crafting story arcs which
extend over several issues, even as each issue presents a self
contained "sub-story". This was a technique which has long been
standard in comics (although I don't know how common it was back in the
early 70s), but which has only recently cropped up on television.
(On TV, it probably began with the so-called "nighttime soaps" like
Dallas, then showed up in Hill Street Blues, and spread from
there.) But even in comics, it is rare to find it done right, as
Wolfman does it here.

Presenting extended story arcs in this TPB form has both a good and a
bad side. On the good side, the reader doesn't have to worry
about missing an issue because his/her local comic shop was sold out,
nor does he/she run the risk of forgetting past details which may have
cropped up months before. On the bad side, story arcs can seem
more impressive and complex when presented a bit at a time, over the
course of many months. When presented in one massive batch like
this, it is easier to spot weaknesses, and the plots may seem overly
simplistic and perfunctory. Here, the longest extended plot
features the machinations of the mysterious Dr. Sun, who has captured
his own vampire, but whose purposes are kept secret for a considerable
time.

While I enjoyed Wolfman's stories, it was Gene Colan's pencils that
truly blew me away. Colan is an interesting artist.
Exceedingly realistic both in his human figures and in his depiction of
architecture, he nonetheless isn't a meticulous "draftsman" in the
fashion of John Byrne or George Perez, whose art, though breathtakingly
complex and accurate, can sometimes seem cold and stiff. With
Colan, you can imagine he is a colourist's worst nightmare, with one
dynamic figure blending into another, all mixed together with swirls of
mist or fog until it is nearly impossible to tell where one figure
ends and another begins. With many artists I can imagine them
roughing in the usual art-class stick person before adding flesh and
clothes. With Colan, he seems as if he is literally drawing
precisely what he is seeing in his mind's eye -- even when he may not
be entirely sure what it is he is
seeing!

Colan makes heavy use of darkness and light, often defining a figure
more in terms of stark shadows rather than through actual
outlines. The result is perfect for a moody horror comic like The Tomb of Dracula. (I
recall reading a debate in the letters page of The Tomb of Dracula over whether or
not this was appropriate given that, in Stoker's original novel,
vampires don't cast shadows!) Since
the Essential TPBs are printed in black and white, some comics may lose
something in the translation, but not so The Tomb of Dracula, which if
anything gains from the emphasis on darkness. Then too there is a
dynamic quality to Colan's images which I have rarely seen in
comics. Even the simplest, most static image is seen from an
imaginative angle, as if viewed by a wildly mobile camera, imbuing it
with energy and kineticism.

The one weakness, in terms of the art, lies in Mike Ploog's pencils
found in issue #15 of Werewolf by
Night. I had fond memories of Ploog's art based on a
fairly
famous issue of Man-Thing
concerning a suicidal circus clown which I read as a kid, but I was
disappointed by the art found here. Nevertheless, it was only one
issue and then back to Colan! (Strangely, the issue of Giant-Sized Chillers #1 appears in
the wrong order and should have come before
the Tomb of Dracula #22 which
here precedes it.)

While Wolfman plays with many characters, he is clearly most interested
in the personality of his titular villain. The others are fairly
one dimensional, and defined mainly by their obsessive need to stake
the big guy. Dracula alone is given depth and motivation,
portrayed as supremely arrogant (he even calls himself a "god") but
sometimes lonely and touched by unexpected signs of human needs -- as
when he seems somewhat smitten by a woman who is being tormented by a
seemingly haunted house.

Reading Essential The Tomb of
Dracula vol. 1, I was pleased to see that my memories weren't
faulty. The series was just as good as I had remembered.
Perhaps better. I just hope they'll bring out a vol. 2.
Which is probably the best praise I can give.